Snowfall-albedo feedbacks could have led to deglaciation of snowball Earth starting from mid-latitudes
| dc.contributor.author | de Vrese, Philipp | |
| dc.contributor.author | Stacke, Tobias | |
| dc.contributor.author | Caves Rugenstein, Jeremy | |
| dc.contributor.author | Goodman, Jason | |
| dc.contributor.author | Brovkin,Victor | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2022-07-14T20:05:10Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2022-07-14T20:05:10Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-05-14 | |
| dc.description | 9 pages with color illustrations. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Simple and complex climate models suggest a hard snowball – a completely ice-covered planet – is one of the steady-states of Earth’s climate. However, a seemingly insurmountable challenge to the hard-snowball hypothesis lies in the difficulty in explaining how the planet could have exited the glaciated state within a realistic range of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Here, we use simulations with the Earth system model MPI-ESM to demonstrate that terminal deglaciation could have been triggered by high dust deposition fluxes. In these simulations, deglaciation is not initiated in the tropics, where a strong hydrological cycle constantly regenerates fresh snow at the surface, which limits the dust accumulation and snow aging, resulting in a high surface albedo. Instead, comparatively low precipitation rates in the mid-latitudes in combination with high maximum temperatures facilitate lower albedos and snow dynamics that – for extreme dust fluxes – trigger deglaciation even at present-day carbon dioxide levels. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | de Vrese, Philipp, et al. “Snowfall-Albedo Feedbacks Could Have Led to Deglaciation of Snowball Earth Starting from Mid-Latitudes.” Wheaton College Digital Repository, Communications Earth & Environment, 14 May 2021, https://digitalrepository.wheatoncollege.edu/handle/11040/34577. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://digitalrepository.wheatoncollege.edu/handle/11040/34577 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | Communications Earth & Environment | en_US |
| dc.title | Snowfall-albedo feedbacks could have led to deglaciation of snowball Earth starting from mid-latitudes |
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